Poems That Make Grown Men Cry, edited by Anthony and Ben Holden, review

An anthology of tear-jerking poems is not just for men

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The poems of WH Auden were found particularly conducive to weepingPhoto: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

By Wendy Cope

10:15AM BST 29 Apr 2014

Anthony Holden’s original title for this anthology was Poems that Make Strong Men Cry. His son and co-editor Ben wisely persuaded him to change it to something “less macho”.

Even so, it is difficult not to be annoyed by the idea. It seems to imply that it takes a really special poem to make a man weep, whereas women will shed tears over any old rubbish.

Late in the day, Holden senior has announced in a newspaper article that the two of them are now planning an anthology of poems that make women cry. Since there is no mention of this in his introduction, it looks like a defensive move.

It’s a pity about the premise because the idea of collecting poems that move people to tears is an interesting one. People who don’t often read poems may be tempted to do so by the mini-essays that introduce each poem. The best ones are open and revealing and often very touching.

Several men write about a bereavement – the loss of a parent or a spouse or, in three cases, of a child. Benjamin Zephaniah, choosing Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”, says “there is something here about his having the kind of love for his father that I never had for mine.” In his introduction to Wordsworth’s “The Character of the Happy Warrior”, newspaper editor Harold Evans pays tribute to his former boss, Denis Hamilton. This is the poem he was asked to read at Hamilton’s memorial service. Simon Winchester, who now lives abroad, has written a beautiful paragraph about missing England, as his introduction to Edward Thomas’s “Adlestrop”.

Some contributors are quite candid about their tears. Andrew Motion says he cries more easily as he gets older (me too) and lists several poets – Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Hardy and Edward Thomas – whose poems “make tears pour down my face”. For the purposes of this book he settles on a poem by that masterly tear-jerker, AE Housman. The same poem, the one that begins “Tell me not here, it needs not saying”, is chosen by Richard Dawkins.

In his brief introduction to a poem by a young Canadian, Emily Zinnemann, Colin Firth writes, “I’m reluctant to talk across this poem; I think it says itself perfectly.” I like that. I was less impressed by the authors of little critical essays, analysing their poem and explaining why they think it works, while revealing nothing about themselves or their feelings. I wonder if there will be less of that in the forthcoming women’s book. A few men admit that their chosen poem doesn’t actually make them cry. To his credit, Alfred Brendel refused to be in the book because, “I easily shed tears when I listen to music, experience a Shakespeare play, or encounter a great performance. Literature doesn’t have the same effect on me.”

The most chosen poet in this anthology is WH Auden, with five entries. These include “In Memory of WB Yeats” (picked by Salman Rushdie), a poem that also reduces me to tears, especially if I try to read it aloud. Joe Klein (the author of Primary Colors) tells us that his poem (another Housman) didn’t make him cry until he read it aloud. His endearingly honest contribution explains how his grief about the deaths of his parents got mixed up with grief about the death of Morse in the television series.

It is fitting that John Clare’s “I Am”, possibly the saddest poem in the English language, should be here, chosen by Ken Loach. Written while Clare was confined in a lunatic asylum, it begins “I am – yet what I am none cares or knows.” Others that have long been favourites of mine include Tony Harrison’s “Long Distance II” (one of his immensely moving poems about the deaths of his parents), chosen by the actor Daniel Radcliffe, and “Sandra’s Mobile”, one of Douglas Dunn’s elegies for his wife, chosen by Richard Eyre. I wasn’t surprised to learn that Richard Curtis is as moved as I am by Seamus Heaney’s “A Call”, which ends “I nearly said I loved him.” Curtis thinks the call is made to a friend; I think it’s the poet’s father. Either way it is a memorable poem.

William Sieghart, founder of the Forward Prize for Poetry, chooses “Aubade”, Philip Larkin’s chilling lines about waking in the early hours and thinking about death. I agree that this is magnificent but it doesn’t make me cry. It freezes me. The same is true of the novelist Douglas Kennedy’s choice, the Emily Dickinson poem that begins “After great pain a formal feeling comes –”.

Among the poems that were new to me was Felix Dennis’s choice, “Out of Work”, by Kenneth H Ashley, a poet I had never heard of. It’s a good poem, and comes with some interesting paragraphs about the “poverty and hopelessness” Dennis experienced when he was young. I hadn’t heard of William Matthews either but I was bowled over by “A Poetry Reading at West Point” (the choice of Tom McCarthy).

That’s the great thing about a good anthology of poems: you are reminded of old friends and introduced to new ones. I didn’t need to be convinced that grown men cry and I’m not sure that many people do nowadays. However, this is a welcome addition to my shelves and I’ll look forward to “Poems That Make Women Cry”. I hope they’ll ask me to be in it.